Arts + Culture

The Flyers’ New Mascot Is Hated By Everyone But Philly

On September 24th, through Twitter, the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team unveiled a new mascot named Gritty. With straggly orange fur, wide open eyes, and a haunting grin… Gritty is not your typical mascot.

Pennsylvania has two NHL hockey teams: the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Philadelphia Flyers. While the two teams are on opposite sides of the state, the rivalry gets close to home. In February of 1968, the Penguins introduced “Penguin Pete”, at a game against the Flyers. It was a live Ecuadorian penguin. The team had skates made for Pete, and multiple different generations of Pete would take the ice until almost the 80s. Today, the Penguins have the mascot “Iceburgh”. Fluffy, cuddly, and the polar opposite of Gritty. The last mascot the Flyers had before Gritty was Slapshot in 1976. Slapshot was like Gritty, being that he was “a 7-foot tall fuzzy orange creature”, though Slapshot looked more like a classically friendly mascot than Gritty.

On his first day on the job, Gritty slipped on the ice, shooting a man in the back with a tee-shirt cannon. After his appearance, Gritty tweeted with Barstool Sports joking, “why didn’t anybody tell me ice is slippery?”. Gritty quickly became a meme, and is aware of it. Gritty tweets self-made memes, is bombarded by fan-made edits, and even announced his internet presence with a simple, “it me.”

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